Opening your pub with social distancing in place

How soon you can reopen your pub and resume trade is likely to depend on how well you can meet social distancing guidelines.

This article looks at how you can run your pub safely and successfully with social distancing in place.

A mobile ordering app

It’s clear customers will not be allowed to congregate around a busy bar in the new world, and it looks very likely that table service will be the only way venues can re-open.

A mobile ordering app, such as OrderTab, enables you to offer table service more efficiently, while keeping both your staff and customers safe.

What’s more, customers order more frequently and spend more when there are fewer barriers to service, so as well as maintaining social distancing you will also be more likely to be able to turn a profit from the reduced number of customers you can accommodate.

You can also use the app to offer a takeaway or delivery service, which could increase your trade further once open, or provide some much needed income while you’re waiting for the nod.

Food & drink drop off points

Customers ordering on their phones removes one touch point, but you will still need to get food & drink orders to your customers. You could address this by having a drop off point at least 2m from each table where staff can leave orders for customers to pick up. It’s worth thinking now about where these drop off points could be.

Alternatively you could ask customers to collect their orders from an area of the bar, as long as you can ensure this won't cause customers to come into close contact with each other.

Self-serve beer taps

Another way to get drinks to customers without staff coming into contact with them is to enable them to pour their own. You can do this with self-service beer taps.

You would need to provide some sanitising wipes for customers to wipe the taps before use, but you may want to do that in any case (see below).

Self-serve taps can be triggered by a contactless bank card, therefore also removing any contact with staff when it comes to payment.

Optimise your trade area

You may want to review your trade area to optimise it around the new arrangements. You'll need to arrnage your tables so that customers are seated at least 2m apart from other groups - using up previous standing areas might help with this.

If customers aren’t able to purchase drinks from the bar, you might be able to use the space in front of the bar for tables (ensuring the customers will be at least 2m away from your staff). If you have a large bar, or multiple bars, you might also be able to free up some of the actual bar area for customer use.

You will also need to think about any bottlenecks where social distancing won’t be able to be easily adhered to. Toilets could be a common area that will need some thought. You could make the toilets unisex, put locks on the outside doors and only allow one person in each toilet at a time.

If you have more than one door into your trade area you might want to consider having a one way system with one door as the entrance and another as the exit.

Sanitise

You’ll need to ensure all surfaces are well sanitised between one group leaving and another arriving. Your staff may need to wear disposable gloves and facemasks.

It would also be a good idea to provide sanitising gel/wipes so customers can sanitise their hands, drinks etc as they wish.

You might want to put notices up to remind people to wash their hands frequently, use sanitising gel, and any other procedures you reccommend.

Secure outdoor space

Outdoor space provides a safer environment for your customers, and securing additional space could give you that vital capacity boost when the number of customers you can fit into your venue is significantly reduced.

If any nearby venues with outdoor space aren’t re-opening maybe you could come to an arrangement to use theirs.

If you have a pavement license and there is additional pavement space you are not currently allowed to use, see if your licence could be temporarily enlarged. If you have any open spaces nearby, approach your local council about using them for trade while restrictions are in place. These requests help get businesses up and running and ensure public safety so should be looked upon favourably.

I’m sure there will be more to think about, particular as further details about restrictions come to be known. For some venues opening with social distancing unfortunately may not be possible at all. For those that can make it work, or are still assessing it, hopefully the above provides a good starting point in working out the practicalities.

The more pubs and bars that can open safely once permitted, the better it will be for the industry and our customers.

If you have any questions on the ideas mentioned in this article, or would just like to discuss your reopening plans and how we can help, just drop get in touch

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